Maynard Johnny Jr. 'Papa Bear' Print Available

Artist: Maynard Johnny Jr.
Title: Papa Bear
Medium: Multi Color Print
Size: 28.5 x 22 Inches
Edition: UNSURE
Price: $770

Maynard Johnny Jr. was born in 1973 on Penelakut Island, British Columbia, and carries both Kwakwaka’wakw and Coast Salish heritage from the Kuper Island Band. He began drawing family portraits and comic heroes as a child, then sharpened his skills as a teenager by studying the lines of master carvers Art Thompson, Richard Hunt and Robert Davidson. Working in paint, print, wood, silver and gold, he pushes traditional formline into vivid new territory, filling ovoids, crescents and trigons with turquoise, purple, sage and sunrise orange that make ancestors stories pop on paper, hide, canvas or public walls. His first canvas, “Mating Eagles,” wove human faces inside symmetrical birds to honour the spindle whorl teaching of interconnection.

Major commissions soon followed: a salmon sculpture gifted to New York’s World Trade Center after 9/11, the wrap-around graphics for BC Ferries’ Salish Heron, the first Indigenous mural in his hometown of Chemainus, and Pacific FC’s official jerseys. Exhibition credits include Changing Hands at the Museum of Art and Design in New York and the Juno Awards cedar gift boxes. Now approaching fifty, Johnny Jr. describes himself as part of a Salish renaissance, using bold hues and precise geometry to spark curiosity about Indigenous resilience and to ensure his grandchildren will see their culture celebrated across the province and beyond.